It's hard to believe that anyone would say no to Tom Ford at this point. The man's changed the face of fashion at least twice—once at Gucci, again with his own label—been nominated for an Oscar after directing just one film, edited magazines, befriended all of Hollywood and, somehow, remained like-able. But he says not everyone believed he could produce a beauty collection in full, at least not until Estee Lauder rapidly sold out of his $40 lipsticks.

So now, on the heels of that and a nail polish one-off, he's diving headfirst into the beauty industry. Architecture was his starting point, "You need to understand the face and compensate for the architecture of the face," and the stars of the 70s—Jerry Hall, Mariel Hemingway, Bianca Jagger—his (not at all surprising) muses. "Natural" has never been a Tom Ford word, and it's not about to be. Starting with a heavy brow, "A nice thick brow is the key to a youthful look," Ford's shilling a smoky eye with a full glossy lip and a face defined by his Shade and Illuminate compact. He's whipped up a calligraphy pen to draw that brow, one "so precise, they can be used to draw on individual brow hairs," he tells WWD.

Ford will star in the ads alongside a glam model, but he's quick to point out it's a business decision and not an ego-driven one. "I'm not in the ads because I'm vain. A lot of people still don't know who I am, and the product sells better with me in the ads," he says, referencing Yves Saint Laurent who famously posed nude for 1971′s Pour Homme campaign. We imagine he'll have no problem selling the collection, but more magazine pages plastered with Ford's face? We won't complain.